Rear End Paralysis: A Case Study in Homeopathy – Part II

An update on Jack. While his mind cleared with the first remedy we gave him, his hind end continued to deteriorate. Two days later, his owner panicked after Jack fell down the stairs, and she took him to the vet to get a prescription for Prednizone, a powerful steroid which she hoped would suppress the immune system and stop the demyelination of his central nervous system.

From a homeopathic perspective, suppressing the immune system’s efforts is the absolutely worst thing you can do in terms of cure, pushing things backward and typically making them worse. However, from a conventional perspective, a drug like Prednizone is often the only option. To understand why, I’ll spend a little time here explaining the mechanics of why vaccination leads to rear end paralysis.

A vaccine is composed of two main components: 1) a trace amount of the virus we are hoping to build antibodies for, and 2) the adjuvent. The idea behind vaccinating, as most people know, is that if we expose the immune system to a tiny bit of a virus, the body will develop antibodies to destroy it, and memory cells to make more antibodies should it ever encounter that virus again. Unfortunately, simply injecting a little bit of the virus into the body is not terrible effective at producing the results hoped for. I’m not sure why this is, but I suspect it is because injection bypasses the body’s security system. Most viruses would enter through the nose or mouth, thus coming into contact with the mucous membrane and starting a chain reaction. Switching to an oral polio vaccine certainly proved to be much more effective, for example. Very few viruses ever enter the body directly into the bloodstream, rabies being an exception as it is transmitted by bite.

If we simply inject a bit of live virus, the patient may actually contract the disease, yet if we inject a killed virus, nothing happens. So a new method had to be found: the adjuvant (‘adjuvant’ is derived from the Latin word ‘adjuvare’ which means ‘to help’). It is not fully understood how the adjuvant works, but essentially it shocks the immune system like putting a screw driver into an electric socket. This sets the immune system on full red-alert, and it subsequently attacks anything it deems as foreign in the body. Ideally, it finds the bits of injected virus and develops antibodies to destroy it.

This system, however, is problematic. First, the primary ingredient of adjuvants is alum, or Aluminum salts. Also, to be safe, the vaccine is denatured and either left as “modified live” or “killed.” This is often done with formaldehyde. The vaccine is then preserved in a substance that often contains mercury. If you do some research on the internet, you will find many articles (funded by pharmaceutical companies) which assert that there is absolutely no risk in injecting any of theses products into a human or animal. Many independent researchers disagree. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, and say only that I can’t help but wonder if the link between Alzheimer’s and aluminum comes from vaccine adjuvant (a practice that started in the 1950’s), and not from aluminum pots…but I digress.

Finally, vaccine viruses must be cultivated, and are typically grown in animal cells, for example monkey or pig etc. As a child I received vaccines grown in chick embryos which left me with a violent allergy to raw eggs and an inability to receive any “boosters.” Vaccines are also grown in calf serum, rabbit brain tissue and monkey kidney cells, and so on. This results in the vaccine containing foreign proteins and possibly other contaminants from the animal cell hosts. Pharmaceutical companies claim that there is, again, no danger to this. However, the oral polio vaccine (OPV) AIDS hypothesis, as summarized in Wikipedia, “argues that the ADS pandemic originated from live Polio vaccines prepared in chimpanzee tissue cultures and then administered to up to one million Africans between 1957 and 1960 in experimental mass vaccination campaigns.” This, of course, has been strongly refuted and dismissed, but I saw a documentary on the topic that was quite convincing. But again, I digress.

That vaccines contain toxic substances and contamination from the animal cell hosts they were cultivated in is fact. The debate is whether or not injecting such a concoction into our bodies, or those of our animals, is harmful. Evidence is mounting that it is, as I have argued many times on this blog.

The more I study the phenomenon, however, the more I understand why this is the case. Getting back to the rabies vaccine (and I would also argue, the distemper vaccine), here is a virus that attacks the central nervous system. As such, a vaccine made from this virus can, and sometimes does, contain contamination from tiny bits of myelin. Myelin is the insulation around our nerve cells which allow them to transmit a signal clearly, in the same way that insulating an electric cord allows a current to flow through without interruption or shorting out.

When injected into the body along with the virus and an adjuvant, the myelin becomes one more foreign object for the body to attack. However, myelin from a foreign culture is the same as myelin in our body, and the antibodies developed in this process then turn on the myelin found naturally in the body. In other words, the body starts attacking itself, destroying the myelin that serves to protect our nervous system.

Here is a very interesting scientific journal article that discusses the case of a Rottweiler suffering from post-rabies vaccine de-myelination. In the article, the dog recovers after being given Prednizone, which is why Jack’s mom wanted to give it a try. The theory is that the steroids “calmed” the attack on the myelin. Apparently it worked in this case, however it did not work for Jack. She had him on Prednizone for two weeks, during which he did indeed regain function and strength. However, as soon as she weaned him off, he began deteriorating again.

Prednizone is extremely harmful and cannot be maintained for any length of time without serious side effects such as kidney failure. Even while his leg was getting better, he had violent diarrhea and other side-effects almost immediately. As such, keeping Jack on this drug is not an option. We had suspended homeopathic treatment during this period, and will be starting again this week. I will continue to write about our efforts to help this dog, documenting any successes and failures as we go. Please keep Jack in your thoughts.

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9 thoughts on “Rear End Paralysis: A Case Study in Homeopathy – Part II”

My 14 yr old labrador had a stroke last year but recovered very well, though the co-ordination of her back legs was never quite as good. However, in the last week her back legs have suddenly started yo collapse on occasions and she is having problems standing up. Once up she walks well enough but will suddenly fall sideways. Years ago my cat was involved in an accident losing use of both hind legs and tail. We refused to have him put down and treated him homeopathically. I gave him Arnica (which had a dramatic effect each time he was given it) and two other remedies which I had seen suggested for paraplegia in dogs(dachshunds I think). The remedies worked and over weeks he got back full use of his legs and over years some of his tail. I am trying deperately to remember what remedies I used but i can’t. Nor can I find the book I read it in. We have no homeopathic vets locally. Have you any thoughts on what those remedies might have been? I know it’s a bit random and not specific to my dog but it certainly worked on teh cat – against everyone’s expectations except mine!. Any help would be gratefully received. June 11th is my birthday and Paddy(my dog) was my Birthday present to myself 14 years ago. I’d like to keep her a little longer as she is absolutely fine in every other respect. Thanks. I hope that Jack is recovering. Mollie

Hi Mollie – Happy belated birthday. What a wonderful present to have brought Paddy into your life 14 years go. I do hope she can recover her leg function and enjoy a little more life with you. It’s so hard to part with our dear companions, I know all too well.

We are struggling to find a remedy that will help Jack, and as I’m sure you know from having worked with a homeopath, every case is unique so it’s difficult (and often counter productive) to generalize. However, here is an article on homeopathic treatment of paralysis that lists a number of remedies, along with their descriptions as they relate to paralysis to help narrow down which one may be of assistance:

It lists most of the remedies I have been researching except for Thuja. If you have any success, please feel free to share your experience here. And I will continue to document our efforts with Jack and hopefully have better news soon.

our 10 yr old Lab (F/S) recently developed rear end paralysis. She was having some episodes before we got her vaccinated in June. When she started having trouble rising and going up stairs we figured it was hip dysplasia (do to breed and size) After not seeing any change with meds we did an xray and her hips are amazingly healthy. She is able to move around less and less and can barely walk anymore. After doing some research I found Degenerative Myelopathy. Seemed to fit but after reading this article I went back and checked our dogs records and we just had her vaccinated at the beginning of June. Which it has only been the last couple months that she has been getting REALLY bad. How do you diagnose this condition and what is your homeopathic treatment?
Please help. We don’t have the money to have her get an MRI or anything, we don’t know where else to turn.

Hi Bevin, I believe Degenerative Myelopathy is just another name for rear end paralysis caused by over-vaccination, as discussed in my posts. It’s pretty typical for something poorly understood to be normalized by giving it a fancy name.

I’m so sorry to hear about your dog. One option for diagnosing an autoimmune demyelination is to have a myelin titer done (i.e. a blood test that checks for antibodies to myelin). If the antibodies are present, then likely this is what you are dealing with. I’m not sure how much it would cost to have such a test done. Furthermore, there’s not a whole lot that can be done – conventionally speaking – for autoimmune demyelination. One option that comes up frequently in the literature is to suppress the immune system with steroids such as Prednisone. This is what we tried with Jack and it didn’t help, but it some cases it apparently does work.

I personally don’t like the idea of suppressing the immune system for any reason – I take a holistic approach and believe that this will cause more harm than good. That said, in an older dog, palliative care may be the best option. You can print out the article I linked to in my post (http://www.fecava.org/files/ejcap/274.pdf) and show it to your vet and discuss the options.

If you would like to try homeopathy, please let me know and I will email you the names of a few homeopaths you could contact who work by email and telephone. I believe we’d have more success with Jack if we were working under professional guidance, but Jack’s owner is not quite ready to invest in this, instead trusting that we can figure things out! (no pressure!)

I need to write the latest update on Jack, but in an nutshell he makes progress, then backslides, then makes more progress. Overall we seem to have stopped the deterioration and he is generally better off than before we started. Still, there’s a long way to go before he’s back to full health.

My name is Suparna Diwakar. I live in Bangalore, India. We have a Daschund, Bruno, who is now 6 and a half years old. In October-November of 2007, Bruno injured his spine trying to hide under a bed. He was in pain for a few days and crawled around temporarily. The vet gave him some injections for the pain and he got better though not completely.

On January 4th 2008, he tripped and injured it again and this time it has been permannent. The vets at the Hebbal Veterinary Hospital in Bangalore recommended euthanasia. Bruno is a part of our family and extremely alert and active. We got him a K-9 cart from the US and he is quite alright. Bruno, however, has no bladder and bowel control though he is able to sense an accident just before it happens. He is , of course, not able to walk at all. He crawls around the house on his fore legs dragging his rear. In the yard we put him in his cart and he chases the cats as usual!

We have managed for a year and half now. Our vet Dr.Pampathi made enquiries about treatment but felt that there was no hope. However, I had read about the stimulator that you have developed at Purdue and would like to explore this treatment. Can you help us?

Hi Suparna,
First, how wonderful that you have not given up on Bruno and that he is able to enjoy life with his K-9 cart. I have seen other dogs use these devices and am always amazed at how well they are able to get around. I think we are often too quick to euthanize without exploring the various options. I’m very glad this is working for you and Bruno.

I’m afraid I am not the person at Purdue you are thinking of, and am not familiar with this stimulator that you are talking about. I think this is the website you are looking for: http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpr/

Have you tried any homeopathic treatment for Bruno? Being in India, you should have access to fantastic homeopaths. That might be a good place to start while you look further into the research being done at Purdue.

I would be very interested to hear about any progress you make, either through this stimulator at Purdue, homeopathic or other treatment. I hope you are able to find a way to help Bruno have a long and happy life. Bless you for continuing to try and help him.

Thank you so much. I did write to Purdue. They have discontinued their programme and were not able to help.

I am afraid that Bruno will not regain his ability to walk because his leg muscles seem to have atrophied. However, I am attempting to find a homeopath who can help him to get his bladder and bowel control back.

The search continues…and Bruno snores on next to me while I write this!

Hi Suparna,
I’m glad to hear that Bruno is carrying on and that you are continuing to try and help him! I suspect that if a homeopath is able to help reverse some of the demyelination, he may still be able to regain some function. The muscles can be rebuilt with time and physiotherapy. Since you live in India, you are well situated to find good help!

If homeopathic treatment does indeed help Bruno (or any other type of treatment that you try), I would greatly appreciate it if you would share what you find here. There are so many people who come to this blog in search of answers around their dogs’ paralysis, and I have so few to offer. Any insight is very much appreciated!